Rendition of Noncanonical Opposition: A Case Study of Qur’anic Composition in Bilingual Transposition

Abstract

Grammar and meaning, form and function, are two linguistic levels intrinsic and indispensable to reading and rendering the Qur’an, the Divine Word of Islamic Scripture, in a foreign tongue. Nida and de Waard’s (1986) ‘functional equivalence’, an amalgamation of formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence, posits that emphasis in translation activity and practice must also be laid on SL form which must be retained and maintained in TL where possible as long as it performs discourse functions and conciliates SL fidelity and TL legibility. The present study argues that the syntactic frames that host noncanonical oppositions in the Qur’an trigger distinct discourse functions that must be transposed as lexicosyntactic and lexicosemantic translation units into Qur’an translation. Building on a typological analysis of a representative dataset retrieved from Qur’anic Arabic Corpus (QAC), the study reveals remarkable variations among the translators in their renditions of noncanonical opposition frames and functions owing to explicitation and domestication. This study recommends revival and reuse of the grammar-translation method in Qur’an translation when SL meaning and function are based on SL grammar and form.